it came in the period of their self realizations...an import step....maybe it was when they decided they each had their own life....many solo attempts on it...if it never happened they would have still been a band maybe.....it was what help tear them down...i don't like it because paul was over attempting and john was self discovering,john seemed distracted and paul was coming on strong...i think some of the ill feelings george had against paul started in this time too...george was helping out doing more than usual to put out a beatle album and was unappreciated.....it plays like an obit to me la la la la falling yes i am falling....da da da da da end

that's the trouble with the US and UK versions. if people say to me that they love I've Just Seen a Face from Rubber Soul. i go no..from Help! and then realise that its the US version. get so confused!

I've always put the two on the same level, and I often get confused which song is on which album. I don't think it's over-rated at all.

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"Someone told me a few minutes ago they saw John walking on the street once wearing a button saying "I Love Paul." And this girl said she asked him, "Why are you wearing a button that says ' I Love Paul'? He said "Because I love Paul."

that's the trouble with the US and UK versions. if people say to me that they love I've Just Seen a Face from Rubber Soul. i go no..from Help! and then realise that its the US version. get so confused!

Andy, I have the US Rubber soul on vinyl and the UK version on disk. I still reckon Falling to be a Rubber Soul song.

I like the US version: "I've Just Seen a Face" is a great album opener. But the US version didn't include "If I Needed Someone" which would have been better than "It's Only Love" or "Wait." "Drive My Car" might have livened up the second side. I like the deliberate folkiness of the US version.

I agree that the UK side one is pretty hard to top.

I like "Run for your Life" but it's a throwaway as are "What Goes On" and "Wait." Revolver doesn't have a comparable throwaway. "Dr Robert" "Love to You" and "And Your Bird Can Sing" seem the least substantial of Revolver but are miles ahead of the filler on Rubber Soul.

Tops songs for me on Revolver: almost everything except those noted above.

But Rubber Soul is a great album for Revolver burnout--and has some of John's best stuff. It's also likeable for its earnestness, or guilelessness. It's hard to imagine that the guy who wrote "Nowhere Man" and "In My Life" would be writing "I Am the Walrus" and "Happiness is a Warm Gun" in a couple of years.

Rubber Soul is my favourite Beatles album, and Revolver comes next. Maybe Rubber Soul "fillers" ("What Goes On", "Wait", "Run For Your Life") are weaker than the weaker tracks from Revolver ("And Your Bird Can Sing", "Doctor Robert", "I Want To Tell You"); but the most well known songs from Rubber Soul are truly classics ("Norwegian Wood", "Nowhere Man", "Michelle", "In My Life") while few songs from Revolver are as memorable ("Eleanor Rigby" being the great exception). I think that Revolver as a whole is a more consistent album, but Rubber Soul has better individual songs. And this is said by someone whose favourite song of all time is "Tomorrow Never Knows".

About Rubber Soul being underrated, I think it was quite overlooked some time ago, but it's got some recognition during the last years, though Sgt. Pepper's and Revolver are still the most acclaimed Beatles albums.

Nice page, hombre. Good insights. I was almost going to say that Rubber Soul has more "classics" than Revolver. I wish John had gone more in the direction of the story songs like "Norwegian Wood" and "Girl." He was damned good at it--reminds me of some of the D.H. Lawrence stuff. And "Drive My Car" has a nice Kinkish twist (maybe even more than Ray Davies had fully developed it). Even songs like "Michelle" seem rooted in a dramatic situation--something that their early songs had ("I Want to Hold Your Hand")--but more sophisticated. As they got more abstract, their songwriting lost some of its immediacy (until John started writing everything about Yoko--and there's only so many of those you can handle).

There are some songs on the White album that aren't as good as Rubber Soul. "Cry Baby Cry" and "Bungalow Bill" look half-written compared to "Norwegian Wood" or "Girl." Real throwaways compared to "Run for Your Life" which at least has some menace and guitar ummph!

Nice page, hombre. Good insights. I was almost going to say that Rubber Soul has more "classics" than Revolver. I wish John had gone more in the direction of the story songs like "Norwegian Wood" and "Girl." He was damned good at it--reminds me of some of the D.H. Lawrence stuff. And "Drive My Car" has a nice Kinkish twist (maybe even more than Ray Davies had fully developed it). Even songs like "Michelle" seem rooted in a dramatic situation--something that their early songs had ("I Want to Hold Your Hand")--but more sophisticated. As they got more abstract, their songwriting lost some of its immediacy (until John started writing everything about Yoko--and there's only so many of those you can handle).

There are some songs on the White album that aren't as good as Rubber Soul. "Cry Baby Cry" and "Bungalow Bill" look half-written compared to "Norwegian Wood" or "Girl." Real throwaways compared to "Run for Your Life" which at least has some menace and guitar ummph!

Yes, I think the songwriting is better in Rubber Soul than in Revolver. Revolver's big merit is the heavy experimentation: as I've read somewhere, that record "pushed the sonic boundaries of rock farther than any other LP in history". But I see Rubber Soul as John's peak as a songwriter: very profound lyrics, beautiful melodies. Such a strong song like "Girl" was written toward the end of the recording sessions! He was even "prophetic" in "The Word", two years before the summer of love. After Rubber Soul, the Beatles records started to be more Paul-dominated; in my opinion, Revolver would be Paul's peak.